Total newbie question but what is the best practice when it comes to using SSH with Git? I'm working on a WordPress project. In the root I have gulp and other dev files/folders like SASS and Scripts that I don't need on the server and in the same project I have my WordPress folder that contains a theme and a few custom plugins. As you can imagine when the theme or any of the plugins are ready to be deployed I don't want to pull everything in my repository on the server. So far as a newbie I've always just pull and pushed the entire repository and used FTP to upload what I need to the server, so how is this done with SSH and Git and is there a better way to have my setup?
EDIT: To make my question a little bit more clear let me give you an example of what I think my issue is. In my main project folder, I have a SASS folder next to my WordPress folder. All I really need to deploy to the server is the WordPress folder. My build process that happens on my dev machine combines all of the SASS files into a single CSS that is then placed into the WordPress folder. I need the SASS folder to be tracked by Git so that any other developer can pull them and continue developing so I can't have git ignore it. However none of those SASS files need to be on the server for WordPress to work either. I just simply need to deploy the WordPress folder and everything that's in it.
I understand the idea of creating a bare repository on the server and using post-receive hook to point the git folder sitting outside your web root to point to where the web root is. But that's basically how GIT and SSH work and that's not answering my concern.
Not with Git
Git is not designed to pull specific files or directories only. It's a directed acyclic graph with binary blobs as objects and sometimes multiple objects get compacted into a single larger object.
Due to Git design, your specific request is not possible.
Alternatives
post-receive hook
If your website only contains simple static files then it's okay to push to a git repository over SSH. In reality, it's unlikely your repository will be large as long as you don't have non-text files.
Take for example the following setup.
/var/lib/www - apache web dir which is the cloned copy of www.git
/var/lib/www.git - a bare git repository.
/var/lib/www.git/hooks/post-recieve - A server side git hook. It can be a shell script that pulls the www repository when this repository is updated.
Sample post-recieve hook script:
#!/bin/bash
cd /home/sam/sandbox/git-hooks/www
unset GIT_DIR
git fetch origin master
git reset --hard origin/master
Zip up build in a tar.gz
At the end of your build you can zip up your files in a tar.gz. This file should be hosted somewhere (perhaps GitHub releases if you're using GitHub). Some enterprises use on premise artifact hosting like Nexus or Artifactory.
The idea being: you have a tested artifact that has a specific sha256sum. The artifact you test is the exact same artifact which eventually goes to production.
Diving into more detail such as continuous integration, continuous delivery, and the software development life cycle might be out of scope for your question.
No best practice.
Git is for source control, not for deployment. There is no best practice for using git this way because git is not a deployment tool. You also don't need git history on your server. In fact, you don't need git at all unless you insist on using it for deployment. You are welcome to use it this way but it's not ideal because of exactly the kind of problem you're asking about.
What is the best practice?
There are a number of tools you could use to handle your deployments. Most of the tools generally let you set up a series of steps that let you deploy the code you want into the environment you want. You could go with simple tools such as Phing or Deployer in the PHP world, or something more sophisticated like Puppet or Chef if you have more complex needs. You could just write your own bash scripts if what you need is really very simple. I recommend Phing or Deployer given the info you've provided. https://deployer.org/ https://www.phing.info/
You'll just configure whichever tool you want to ssh into your target box and copy over only the files you want into the directory you want on the server, in whatever way you would like to do that. Usually, you have the script copy files into a temp dir, tarball them up, ssh them over and untar them. After that, you'll usually do some additional work on the server to move files around, change symlinks, whatever else you might need to do.
What about compiled SASS, ES6 js files, or modern static stuff?
All you need to do is add steps to the handle the static files and where you want them to go. Include the generated static files in your tarball when you push stuff up, and put them in the right directories in the server once you untar it.
When you configured your SASS compiler, and whatever other pre-compiled static code you may have - you configured it to create a destination file. That is, the file(s) of actual CSS and JS that they generate. That's all you need to bring along - and if you have the destination directory set to be inside your wordpress theme, you may not even have to pay all that much special attention to it's handling. You may need to move them somewhere else once they are on the server but that all depends on the specific setup in your server, which I think is outside the scope of this question.
Additional Notes:
You didn't ask about this but I thought it was worth mentioning, that you shouldn't be sending the entire wordpress repository every time you update. Just like you don't need the uncompiled SASS code, you also don't need to be repackaging core WordPress. You don't even need to be commiting core WordPress, its a dependency and you don't need to be changing it.
All that should be getting committed by you is your theme and plugin code, and the uncompiled static files. Compiled static files and external dependencies like the WordPress core don't belong in your git history. For deployment purposes, WordPress should already be installed. The stuff in your tarballs should just be plugins and themes, and additional static files if they aren't already in there for some reason.
TLDR;
Don't use git for this. Use a tool like Phing or Deployer. Build your static files into your theme, and create phing/deployer scripts that tarball up only the code you want, SSH's it over to your server, and untars it into the directories you want. If you have some special location on the server for your static files, just make sure to add steps in your script for that.
So, based on your question and comment, there are three computers involved. There is a web server (when you say "server", I take it as a Web server in this scenario, or the server computer that runs a Web server program). There is another server where your git repo is hosted. And, there is your dev workstation. Is this correct?
It seems like, you have a cloned git repo on your Web server. Your current practice/workflow appears to be (1) (based on your expression "SSH'ed into my server") you log into the web server via SSH (just like Telnet) from your workstation (SSH is just a protocol, which can be used for different purposes). (2) you pull from your repo on hosted service (e.g., github), and (3) deploy it to your "www" directory on the same server. Is this correct?
(I can think of an alternative scenario based on your use of the word "FTP", etc., but let's focus on the above scenario, for now.)
Now, your question is, whenever you "pull" (on your Web server), you feel like you are pulling everything from your repo on your hosted service. And, is there a better way? Am I understanding your question correctly?
If so, as another commenter suggested, git (and, any version control system, in general) is very good at fetching "deltas" only. If you are worried about "fetching everything" every time you pull (the step (2) above), then your worry is unfounded.
Now, the question is, why do you have a git repo on your Web server, if that is indeed the case? This is a pretty legit setup and I've done this before (e.g., on EC2). But, as a best practice, people generally don't do that on "production" servers. It's because you have to "build" your web app, and you really don't want to do that on production servers.
The next question is, what do you exactly do in Step (3)? The build process (whatever process you use) typically generates an "output" which can be directly deployed to the web server. (The convention is the output is generally a single folder, "public", "www", "dist", or whatever, or a single file (e.g., tar.gz, zip, jar, war), etc.) Regardless of whether you build the deployable output on your dev workstation (or, a build machine) or on your Web server, you don't generally do "deltas" in this context. Even if you've only changed a single file (say, a CSS file), you generally build the whole output again (instead of, say, just replacing the changed CSS file only). When you use FTP to upload files, etc., you can selectively upload certain files and/or directories, etc., but as a general practice, we don't do that. We always build the complete output from scratch and deploy it to the Web server. (This is mainly to reduce the potential deployment errors and increase the reliability.)
So, to answer your question, (A) If you are pulling git repo on your Web server, you should really change that practice, and move the build process to your dev computer or a dedicated build machine. (BTW, services like github, gitlab, TFS, ... provide the build service for you.) (B) If you are currently selectively FTP'ing your web app files to your Web server, then you should really consider adopting some kind of formal build, and deployment, process moving forward.
After your SASS build process is done use scp or rsync to move the files to the prod server:
scp -r /[local wordpress dir]/wp-content/themes/your-theme/ username#your.prod.server.com:/path/to/dir/wordpress/wp-content/themes/
scp -r /[local wordpress dir]/wp-content/plugins/* username#your.prod.server.com:/path/to/dir/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/
I am working in a project and using git ssh with bitbucket following is the process i am using it may work for you also if not please correct me :
Step 1 ->I have setup git and create repo in bit-bucket.
Step 2 ->And setup project with my local and linked with my repo.
Step 3 ->connect my server using ssh.
Step 4 ->Work in my local and commit and push all changes in my git repo.
Step 5 ->Run git pull on ssh so all changes deployed in my server.
I am using above process and i love this process.i have used .gitignore file that is not required for push on my repo.
Thanks
I usually deploy my vendors with a simple composer install in production.
I would prefer not using composer in production, so I'd need to build the vendors from my machine and deploy them in production.
I could copy the vendor directory but I'll certainly have to install other files like app/bootstrap.cache.php or other autoloader.php
2 questions so:
What are these files I could install/update ?
Are there any known practices to deploy pre-built vendors anyway ?
I would say the procedure is pretty straighforward (at least it works for me that way): To deploy your application, you'd create a new directory, export the code from a tag into it (i.e. you don't export all repository-managing data like a .git directory). You then run composer install --no-dev, which will do some work, and should also run anything that is mentioned in the scripts in the composer.json file.
The result in this previously empty directory goes to the production server in whatever way you like, be it SCP, SFTP, rsync... There is no real "magic" going on here, essentially it is copying of files.
You may want to make sure you can roll back quickly, so I'd recommend to deploy every version into a designated directory, and then link the current version with a symlink. As an example: You had deployed your old version in /srv/www/htdocs/app-1.0 and symlinked the directory /srv/www/htdocs/app to point to this directory. The vhost uses the generic app directory to serve the app.
The deployment will create a new directory /srv/www/htdocs/app-1.1, and putting it live will simply delete the old symlink and create a new one to the new directory. This should put your new version live instantly. Rolling back would mean to delete the symlink and create the one pointing to the old version again.
YMMV, because things like caches will affect the outcome, but this is not in the scope of how and where to use Composer to deploy software.
When developing for asp.net using visual studio for web, it is really convenient that when you deploy your website to the web server, it will cleverly check which files have been changed and only upload those files. In addition, if you deleted some files from your source, it detects that too and deletes those files from the web server since they are no longer needed.
I started developing with the LAMP stack and am wondering how you can deploy to a web server in a similar way.
I tried using Filezilla and on copy/pasting the source files to the web server, you have these options if there are similar files:
-Overwrite
-Overwrite if source is newer
-Overwrite if different size
-Overwrite if different size or source newer
"Overwrite if source is newer" works, kind of, but it only checks the date modified, not the content of the file. Also, the above method does not delete files from the web server that were deleted from the source.
Is there a better way to do this with Filezilla? (or maybe use some other program?)
Thanks.
You can use rsync to accomplish this.
When you want to push out changes you would do something like this form your production server.
rysnc -av user#<developmentIp>:/web/root/* /production/web/root/
The pattern is rsync --flags [user#host:]/source/dir [user#host:]/destination/dir
You only need the user#host stuff for remote hosts. The user must have ssh access to the host.
Couple little suggestions.
The command can be run from the source or destination. I find it better to run the command from the destination, for permissions issues (i.e. your reading from the remote and writing to the local)
Do some tests first, I always mix up the directory stuff; do I need the end slash, should I use the star, ...
Read the man page, there are alot of available options that may be helpful (--delete, --exclude, -a)
I searched and tried a couple of tutorials on the internet but none of them worked for me well.
The tutorials I followed were from Symfony2 documentation, Dator, Hpatoio and Capifony.
Can somebody explain to me how I can export my project into my server. E.g. www.domain.com/about.
It would be very helpful to me.
I have a bundle and inside the bundles all controller and twig templates etc are set.
If you have any questions please ask.
Thanks in advance.
First off it should be noted that deploying a Symfony2 app over FTP is really really bad. It makes a couple of steps more difficult (or even impossible) and should be avoided. If you have SSH access to the machine look at my list of alternative deployment methods below.
Preparation
There are a few things you cannot influence when you deploy over FTP. If you have no control over the following or can not configure them correctly you unfortunately have no chance of deploying to a shared hosting.
The PHP configuration. If settings are not set correctly and you have no chance of changing them you are unfortunately lost.
Any PHP module you may require. Same as above. If you can not install any additional modules you need there is no chance for you. (An example for that would be the php5-intl module for any Symfony <2.6)
Correct folder permissions. Especially for app/cache and app/logs. Check the docs for requirements.
The Webserver configuration. Symfony needs a correctly configured Webserver (in most cases probably apache or nginx) to function correctly. If you can not influence the config this is bad as well. You might want to try to define the rewrite rules in a .htaccess file as described here.
Deployment
Here are the steps you need to follow to prepare your application for deployment for the first time:
Update / Install vendors. Use composer install (or composer update) to install any third party bundle or library you use in your project since you have no option to install them later directly on the server.
If you use Assetic for your asset management, make sure you install these as well with the php app/console assetic:dump --env=prod command.
Dump any other assets like so: php app/console assets:install --env=prod. (This step might not be required but you need to make sure the assets are not symlinked. Check this blog post if you are using symfony >=2.6)
Clear the cache for production: php app/console cache:clear --env=prod
Make sure you edit your parameters.yml to fit the needs of your production server.
Also update your database schema on your production database in case you have changed it during development.
Now you should be good to go. Copy the whole folder onto your server and try it out.
For the future
If you deploy for the second time make sure not to override any user data (e.g. uploaded images). Also you need to clear the cache over ftp. To do that empty the app/cache directory.
Alternative deployment methods
In case you have more access to the server check out any of these. They might fit your needs better than old pure FTP. Maybe they give you reason enough to change to a more appropriate server. Capifony is probably one of the best deployment tools for Symfony2 apps. Deployment will be as easy as running cap deploy on your local machine. The rest is magic ;) Simple git is also possible for deployment. Many of the above steps will still apply but you have all the advantages git gives you like not copying everything every time you deploy. A very good list of all tools can be found in the docs.
It might help if you tell us a little more about your server set up, but here's a fairly generic guide:
Assuming you want to upload it using ftp (since you tagged the question as such), you will need an FTP
client (see here for some suggestions).
Using the FTP client, you'll want to connect to your server
(hostname: yoursite.com) using your credentials (if it is a secured
server).
From there, you should be able to upload any files from your local
machine to the server.
More specific directions will depend on your server configuration and the FTP client you choose (it should come with its own manual)
I'm going to start using grunt-rev & grunt-usemin with grunt-watch for my web development needs (a RESTful Web App specifically).
I have a local development machine which will run grunt-watch to attach revision identifiers on my JS files. I git commit and git push my tree to a git repo, and then ask the production server to git pull the changes from the git repo to show them to the web visitors.
The problem is that I don't want my git repo to store different filenames (due to grunt-rev) on each commit. That would be bad, because then I wouldn't be able to do git diff between commits without having my screen get flooded with the contents of files that appear and disappear, and also it could (sometimes) take up a lot more storage than if it only stored the small diffs of the files.
The only solution I see is to add the build directory containing the versioned filenames in my .gitignore, so as to not store those files (with the constantly changing filenames) in git. But wouldn't that mean that I would have to run grunt-watch on my production server as well, in order to produce the build directory with the versioned filenames there as well? But that gets complicated: a new process has to run on the remote server, maybe with its small chances of error in processing the files. Not the solution I was hoping for.
Do you people have another solution? What would you suggest I did?
What I do to solve this, is to remove previous "build" files before committing and deploying a new file. There is no need to keep older files that have been generated, because you can always rebuild them with the source files (which are in git).